[Dreams] Feb. 28, 2011

When Dreams Die

Nothing is quite as painful as watching a dream die

It’s like tearing a part of yourself away from your body

An arm

A leg

Maybe ripping a corner of your heart out of your chest

I know.

I’ve done it.

I spoke this weekend about giving everything to Jesus

Pouring out all our dreams

At His feet.

Giving Him control.

I should have known that He would say,

“What about you? What about the dreams that you’re clinging to?”

My mind is filled with images,

They are the essence of my dreams.

All beautiful. Precious.

But then comes reality.

All dreams are not meant to live.

Some exist to die.

And its okay!

God does good things with dead dreams.

But it still hurts.

Sometimes the pain is so bad,

It feels like you can’t breathe.

Sometimes,

When they’re starting to die-

Life bleeding its way out…

The anger is so great that all you want-

Is to take a knife and kill them yourself.

Throw them against a wall.

Trample them under your feet.

Get the dying over-

So you can start picking up the pieces.

This has been the year of dead dreams.

The lovely pictures have been replaced with pieces of death.

Tonight my husband and I stood out in the shop,

Talking and talking

Crying and crying.

Yesterday, I let a dream die that I’ve been trying to keep alive

For far too long.

Like a person on life-support

Whose brain has been dead for years and years.

Today I realized that another dream,

One that’s been, well, sick

for quite some time,

Is on its death bed.

I wanted to go for my knife.

I wanted to throw it.

Kick it.

Stomp it into the ground.

I don’t want to watch it die.

I just want to kill it.

Then I can pretend that I never wanted it

To begin with.

We haven’t decided what to do.

We just prayed and prayed and prayed.

If you have a minute, you can pray with us too

Because God does perform miracles

But it will have to happen soon.

I didn’t get out my knife.

Yet.

But I still might.

Because some days I think-

I can only stand so much pain at one time.

He never said there’d only be sunshine

He never said there’d be no rain

He only promised a heart full of singing

About the very thing

That once brought pain.

(Phil Johnson and Bob Benson Sr.)